I usually start with dinners and I try to have a mix of
prepped ahead, one pan meals, and a little more involved. Thanks to my W30
cookbooks and my past experience (and a little Pinterest) I came up with the
following (in no particular order):

Once I have the meals picked, I figure out what will make
good leftovers for lunches.

Both soups will make at least one extra serving and each of
the sheet pan meals will make one extra serving. So that’s 4 lunches. For the
remaining lunches, I will have the same thing: lettuce wrapped turkey burgers
with mayo and pickles.

Once I have the meals for the week, I look at all the meals
and figure out what I can and have to prep ahead. I commute at least 45 minutes
each way so dinner has to be fast and easy. That only happens if I can dedicate
part of Sunday to meal prep. My meal prep day has been the defining success or
failure of my rounds.

For this week, I figured I can make the following on Sunday
to simplify:

The broth I can set up in the slow cooker in the morning (10
minutes of effort?). Each of the soups will take probably an hour. Cutting
veggies for roasting and salads, maybe 30 minutes. The mayo takes longer to
clean than to make. But it’s still a big part of my day. Hubs can run errands
or have some one-on-one time with our toddler.

The meal planning itself is an evolving process. If
something works really well, I will keep it in rotation (if these soups are
great, I’ll make one Week 2 and another Week 3). And with Week 1, I keep it
simple on purpose. Lots of repeats and lots of prep ahead because I need the
successful moment to keep me through Week 2 (which is where I have flunked
out). I keep notes on what sounds good during the week, and I use sticky notes
in my compliant cookbooks. Most of my planning is on paper and I have a grocery
app to use in the store.

In Case Of Emergencies: Even this simple meal plan may not go according to plan. So at the start of my Whole 30, I stock up on frozen cauliflower rice, compliant Aidell's sausage (not all flavors are okay), and frozen veggies. I can make a meal from just cauli rice and sausage in about 10 minutes. I always have RX Bars and Epic bars on hand too (in case of traffic, long meetings, spilled lunch, etc) to limit temptation to go off plan. Again - check the flavors, just like Larabars - not all flavors are compliant.

A note about Pinterest. For starters, I love Pinterest. I
have found some wonderful Paleo bloggers on the site who post compliant meals
or recipes that can be easily modified to be W30 compliant. But. Many recipes
are marked Paleo or Whole 30 but are obviously not compliant. Be cautious and
be knowledgeable. Just because someone else has called Paleo Pancakes “Whole 30
compliant” doesn’t mean that you don’t know the rules enough to know that it’s
super SWYPO and off limits. Or people who, through good intentions, aren’t even
aware of what Whole 30 really is and will post something with dairy or honey or
quinoa. Don’t assume that the bloggers know better. You do.

I use Pinterest a lot – for parenting ideas, funnies, and
recipes. I have a bunch of boards, and one just for Whole 30. Do you know about
private boards? Well I have a private weekly board. And when I am going through
W30 pins that I already have, I will simply pin again to my private board for
the week. Then all my recipes are in one place, I don’t have to remember or
search. Then at the end of the week, I just delete and start fresh.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

White Elephant // What are the gifts you’re looking forward to giving, or hoping to receive?When I was growing up, Hanukkah had some predictability to it. We would always receive: calendar, pajamas, at least one outfit, one "big" gift, usually a book, and a few little things that we wanted to fill in the gap. Once I got to college, it was truncated to calendar, pajamas, and a big gift. I really enjoyed that growing up. And it's a tradition that I plan to continue forward with Knish. The only gift we got her last year was a dreidel. And I would like to start a dreidel tradition every year.I saw in Pinterest (a blessing and a curse) a set of gifts themed "something you want, something you need; something to wear, and something to read". I can pair this with a calendar, pajamas, dreidel, and charitable donation to round out the 8 nights. Since Hanukkah isn't about gifts, per se, I would still like to keep the holiday modest as the years go on, but I know celebrating Christmas with half the family will confound this.This year, my husband's family and I are doing something new for us - we are cutting back on gifts for each other and are instead adopting a family and buying for them. We all agreed that by the end of the holiday, we felt obligated and drained, so why not take the budget we were going to spend and turn it into something positive. We are all taking great joy in planning what to get for the family and I hope we can turn this into an annual tradition.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Sunny Surprises //Most of North America starts to get frosty and cold this time of
year.If you had an unusually warm (tank
tops and flip flops warm!) day unexpectedly and didn’t have to work, what would
you do?

As I type this, it is sunny and warm (50’s) in the south of
France. There are palm trees outside. And yet I still cannot frolic (I have
been inside the hospital, working, watching the beauty outside).

But were I home and the weather turned amazing, I would
wander downtown Seattle, taking in the sights and tastes, and perhaps take a
ferry to an island. I could enjoy the breeze and salty air. Or maybe head
north, off the main highway, to a tiny town where Hubs and I went on our way to
our babymoon. We can view the coast between the trees, eat at the homey café,
and take in the antique shops in Edison.

Basically,
anything I could do to soak up even the smallest amount of Vitamin D to stock
up for the remaining cloudy days through May.